Britain is on the verge of punching herself in the face in order to have the freedom to shoot herself in the foot. According to the Spectator’s James Forsyth, and ITV’s Robert Peston, the Government is willing to sacrifice a trade deal with the European Union over state aid rules. “The sticking point [in EU negotiations] isn’t […]
“I thought the British accepted election results”. This comment, made to me last year, unprompted, by a Lebanese friend (Hi, Aamir!) I hadn’t seen for 20 years did two things. First, it focused my mind even more intently — if that were possible — on the job of covering Brexit for various outlets. Secondly, it […]
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, constantly complains that the UK is trying to wriggle out of the ‘level playing field’ commitments it made in the joint Political Declaration of October 2019. “Since the start of these negotiations, the UK has refused to engage on credible guarantees for open and fair competition,” Barnier lamented […]
The EU is to rules what a mouse is to an old pantry door. So no one should be surprised that Downing Street has reportedly been looking at making British law underpinning future UK-EU arrangements airtight. The European Commission and some MEPs might not like that, but they only have themselves and their own twitching […]
After days and nights of negotiations, the hard-won agreement on the EU recovery fund, was hailed as a chance to make the EU more relevant to voters. The mood of sleep-deprived euphoria led some to describe this impressive achievement for diplomacy as a “Hamilton” moment, a staging post on the road to a federal Europe […]
Before everything was swept aside by the imperatives of combating the Covid-19 pandemic, this Government had placed at the core of its mission the ambition to build a ‘global Britain’. That phrase covers a host of subjects, not least our trading relationships with the EU and the rest of the world. But few things have […]
On Friday, in Northern Ireland, Michael Gove announced the formation of a Trader Support Service (TSS), to help the province’s businesses with paperwork when an Irish Sea border comes into force at the end of the Brexit transition period. Despite the fact that this scheme is deemed necessary, and despite the fact that Northern Irish […]
In Beyond Brexit the constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor wrote that ‘if the United Kingdom is to survive, devolution has to be understood in terms of the needs of the country as a whole, not just its component parts’. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to have made it through to the devolved governments themselves, judging from their latest run-in […]
This is the CapX weekly briefing For the past fortnight I’ve been working from the picturesque market town of Ross-on-Wye, which sits on the cusp of the Anglo-Welsh border. And while friends suggest London has been basking in a semi-sociable ‘new normal’ for some time, in Ross-on-Wye recent days have felt significant. Two weeks ago, […]
In 1995 Robert Putnam published an essay titled ‘Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital’. For Leave-supporting academics today’s equivalent might be ‘dining alone’ – at least, according to a new report from the thinktank Policy Exchange. Academic Freedom in the UK reveals that only 54% of academics would feel comfortable sitting next to a known […]
Ahead of the visit he made to Scotland last week, Boris Johnson declared the UK to be the ‘most successful political union the world has ever seen’. Its ‘sheer might,’ he said, had been critical during the response to the coronavirus pandemic. This followed the publication by his government of proposals – which are strongly […]
Boris Johnson is in Scotland to save the Union. This is not a sentence that will fill many Scottish unionists with joy. His ratings amongst Scottish voters are poor. His track record on the Union is patchy. His relations many Scots Tories are, to put it mildly, not great. Nonetheless, this visit is a welcome […]
Brexit is about sovereignty. It is about reclaiming what the UK had, prior to 1972, when it joined the EC and agreed to pool its sovereignty. That pooling no longer suits the UK, as the 2016 Referendum determined. And nobody voted to give up bits of sovereignty to the EU on the way out. Nor […]
As protests go it was hardly Stop The War or Black Lives Matter. Earlier this week a caravan of slow-moving tractors snaked its way through Parliament Square in a politely observed demonstration against US food imports. If the gathering was relatively sedate, it reflected a battle already won. Not only have government ministers repeatedly affirmed […]
Earlier this week the pro-Welsh independence group Yes Cymru released the results of a YouGov poll showing that 27% of English adults would support English independence in a hypothetical referendum (51% were against, whilst 18% responded ‘don’t know’, and 4% refused to respond). This figure in itself was relatively shocking, especially when one considers that […]
The Irish republic finally has a new prime minister, after Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party agreed last week to form a coalition government. following months of negotiations to thrash out a shared policy platform, Fianna Fail’s leader, Micháel Martin, was appointed taoiseach on Saturday. The Republic’s general election took place way back […]
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